‘Better not to think of it. You should only rest, now.’
‘I had an idea that if you were to coat your flesh with pork fat prior to submersion, that would likely reduce the damage.’
‘It is a fine idea, Hermann.’
He gasped. He said, ‘Well, I feel we have known each other a long while!’
‘I feel just the same.’
‘And I’m sorry about your dying before.’
‘I am all right, now.’
‘I wanted to help you. I thought we could be friends.’
‘We are friends.’
‘I’m,’ he said. ‘I’m.’ He opened his mouth widely and there came a foreign noise from deep within his insides, as though a solid piece of him had cracked or popped. What was this? I did not think it hurt him, or at least he made no sound of pain. I held my hand to his chest and felt his heart flutter and drop. A column of air pushed from his mouth and his body lurched and grew still, and this was where the clock stopped for Hermann Kermit Warm. His right arm fell from the cot and I lifted it back up. When it fell again I left it to hang and exited the tent. I found Charlie sitting fireside, and all was the same as when I had left him save for one conspicuous detail.
Chapter 57
Which was that there were now a half-dozen Indians milling about the camp, rummaging our bags, inspecting the horses and donkeys, and generally searching through our possessions for anything of value they might keep for themselves. The moment I breached the tent an Indian holding a rifle gestured with the barrel that I should sit beside Charlie, and I did this. Neither my brother nor I were armed, our gun belts sitting coiled beneath our saddles on the ground, as was our habit when we were bivouacked. But even if Charlie had been armed I do not know that he would have pulled his pistol. He sat to the side, staring into the flames, casting the rare glance at our visitors but not wanting any part of them.
The bucket of gold sat between us, and I believe this might have gone undetected if Charlie had not attempted to hide it under his hat, which the Indian with the rifle saw and was made suspicious by. He crossed over and tossed the hat aside; his expression was unsmiling and remained so even when he discovered the bucket’s contents. But he found it interesting enough that he called for the others to abandon their investigations, and now they were all squatting around the fire and peering into the metal container. One of them began to laugh but the others did not like this and told him, if I am not mistaken, to be quiet. Another looked at me and addressed me brusquely; I thought he was asking where we had got all the gold. I pointed to the river and he stared at me contemptibly. They emptied the bucket, pouring out equal shares into calfskin bags until it was empty. After this they stood and discussed some serious matter or another, pointing at Charlie and me as they spoke. The Indian with the rifle entered into Warm’s tent and gasped. To think of it now, this seems most un-Indian-like, him gasping like that. But he really did do it. He gasped just like an old woman and all but fell out of the tent, his hand clamped over his mouth, his eyes wide with fright and scandal. Shooing his people backward, away from our camp and toward the river, he described what he had seen in the shelter, and they all turned and hurried off into the darkness. I found it odd they did not take our pistols or horses or lives, but it was likely they thought we had some manner of plague or leprosy. Or perhaps they decided the gold was treasure enough.
‘Warm’s dead,’ I told Charlie.
‘I am going to sleep,’ he said.
And do you know, this is just what he did do, too.
Chapter 58
I put Warm into the ground in the morning, with no help from Charlie, though he was once again petulantly present for the burial itself. Warm’s lone bag was filled with his diaries and papers and I searched through these for the formula’s recipe but could not understand hardly any of what he had written down, this owing less to my ignorance of science and chemistry than to his penmanship, which was atrocious. Finally I gave up and rested the books atop his chest before filling him over with sand and earth. I made no speech this time, and decided I would not mark either one of the side-by-side graves, which I have since wished I had done, illustrating some connection between them as loyal friends, and also mentioning their accomplishments on the river. But I was feeling melancholic and obscurely hexed or obstructed and wanted badly to move on; and so the moment the grave was filled, Charlie and I mounted our horses and left, with the tent standing and fire still smoking. Looking back at the camp I thought, I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself. So that they would not starve to death I had untied Warm’s horse and the donkeys. The horse did not move but the donkeys followed after us. I fired a shot over their heads to scatter them and they ran downriver. They were naked, without any sign of ownership on them, and their stumpy legs swiveled back and forth so quickly and efficiently it did not look real to me.
We took a northwesterly route and arrived in Mayfield three days later. During all this time of riding, Charlie and I had little to say to each other, though when we spoke we were civil and not unfriendly about it. I believe he was wondering whom he might be for the rest of his life; and in a way I was wondering the same thing about myself. Reflecting on the last few days I had passed I told myself, If this was indeed my last bit of work, it is just as well to bow out in so dramatic a fashion. I decided I would pay my mother a visit just as soon as I was able, if she was in fact still alive; and I had many invented, conciliatory conversations with her, each of these ending with when she reached her crooked arm over my neck, kissing me above the line of my beard beneath the eye. The thought of this made me tranquil, and the ride to Mayfield, despite our recent hardships, was as pleasant as could be expected. At what was roughly the halfway point I said to Charlie, ‘Your left hand is still faster than most men’s right.’
‘Most isn’t all,’ he answered, and we returned to silence.
My thoughts about the Indians stealing the gold were complicated. It seemed appropriate in some way that we should not have it—had I not felt a sense of remorse when I hefted that bucket? But I doubt I would have been able to pontificate with such detachment if there was not the pile of gold waiting for us under the stove in Mayfield, a sum that represented for me the realization of all I wanted to be changed in my life. So when I smelt smoke on the wind a mile or two outside of town, I was inhabited by the most powerful type of dread and apprehension. In the time it took Charlie and I to get to the hotel, my feelings pushed past worry and on to anger, which gave way to miserable acceptance. The hotel was burned to the ground, as were the surrounding buildings; in the rubble I spied the potbellied stove, and it was toppled. I stepped through the ash and blackened timber, knowing our treasure was gone, and when I found it to be unrectifiably so I turned back to Charlie, sitting with hunched shoulders on Nimble in the middle of the sun-blanched road. ‘Nothing,’ I called.
‘Drink,’ he called back, which was just as sane and thoughtful a reply as I had ever heard him speak. But with the hotel gone there was nowhere to get a drink, or nowhere to sit and become drunk, and we were forced to buy a bottle of brandy from the chemist’s and to empty this in the road like common rascals.